Ferrari: Bending Spoons was seeded with €40k leftover from failed startup Evertail
Luca Ferrari · The Playbook on Buying and Running Companies Forever · Invest Like The Best · Nov 4, 2025 · at 7:53
Luca Ferrari is co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons. He explains how the failure of his previous venture-backed startup, Evertail, provided the initial seed capital for Bending Spoons.
0:00 / 0:39exact quote · 39.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We had about 40,000 euros left. The, that money belonged to the VC because of liquidation preferences, but it was too little for the size of that fund, and they told us, look, it's just too much hassle and legal cost for us to go through this administrative process of liquidation. You guys worked, you were honest, worked as hard as any, anyone could demand of you. You keep the money. We'll sell Our shares to you for a nominal one euro and, you know, go, you probably get something after taxes from it and just go and get a nice vacation. But we're, you know, we're sick in the brain, and so rather than going on vacation, we took whatever we could, and that was a seed capital for Benny Spoons. This is 2013.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Luca Ferrari
Ferrari: Most software R&D is a waste of money
“I think people in general overestimate the value of R&D. Let me qualify. They think that generally pouring money into building stuff pays, pays off. It's really not true at all. What we find is that there's a very small number of things that pay, pay off hands…”
Ferrari: Founders complaining about investor exit pressure are naive or dishonest
“I think a lot of entrepreneurs take money from investors and have a level of Entitlement that they should never be asked to provide a return. It's like, oh, but why do you ask me to sell now? It's only been four years, five years. I think that's either naive o…”
Ferrari: Standalone companies like Evernote attract average talent on average
“So on average, a business like Evernote, no matter how charismatic, intelligent its leaders are, will attract somewhat Average talent.”
Ferrari: Bending Spoons offers near maximum upfront to avoid negotiating up
“We try to make an offer that's sometimes the maximum will to pay or close to it because we think although we could probably get a better deal in the moment if we started lower, Then we don't want to establish a reputation for people you can push around and get…”
Ferrari: Outlier investors evaluate fundamentals from first principles instead of pattern matching
“Most good investors are they recognize patterns. So I've seen a certain business model work, and I use that to select their investments. If done right, this is a very successful way of investing. And then there are the bad investors and the amazing investors, …”
Ferrari: People can only evaluate intelligence up to their own level
“I find that if someone is eight out of 10 smart, they can only discern the sevens from the sixes from the fives, but the eight and a half, the nines, the tens for them look like the same, like a big batch of, oh, they're so smart. And so to be able to distingu…”